Search Engine Graffiti

Looking down at the puddle of water soaking my dark blue flip flops. Gazing around me feet to see what I stumbled upon. It must be 3:00 a.m., the alley is near pitch black except for the glow from the distant street light on Burnside Ave. Listening to the sound of an empty beer bottle rolling down the alley, my eyes fix upon the item that smashed against my toe. A silver spray paint can with the label removed. As I begin to continue on my late night journey wondering around the city aimlessly, thinking about some new online marketing tactics and how to grab the readers attention, I see something written on the alley brick wall above the dumpsters. It is too dark to make out due to the poor lighting in this dim lit Portland Oregon alleyway. So I scuffle my body a few feet to the right so I can make out the letters written on the wall, as now the fumes of the paint take its toll on my nose. Fresh paint and the spray paint can left behind by the graffiti artist, I make out the words written on the wall.

As I read the words on the wall in a large bold font, I began to laugh out loud, “Search Engine Optimisation” ha ha ha. Now why would someone write these three words on the wall to make a statement and misspell them, as I thought. As I stood there soaking my feet in this warm puddle of toxic water mixed with oil, I stared at those words sprayed upon the wall, Search Engine Optimisation, and I begin to think, why the “S” and not the “Z” in optimisation.

I was about to reach down and grab the spray paint can and walk over to the wall and fix the “S” and change it to a “Z”. Then a quick sudden burst of thought ran through my mind, Robert, don’t put your finger prints on the can. OK. So I looked around for a rag or something to hold the can with so I would not leave any evidence. I would not want to go to jail for fixing a spelling mistake I thought. To my luck, I saw in the garbage bin, an old rag. I walked over and grabbed the filthy rag and wrapped it around the can so I would not leave any of my DNA attached to the aluminum of the spray paint can. I thought for a brief second about the “S” in “Search Engine Optimisation” and decided to not to fix the letter s just yet. So I hid the can behind the dumpster and continued my journey through the empty streets of Portland.

It must be around 4:00 a.m. now. I decided to head home and get back to the computer. I am one of those nigh owl developers pounding away while the city sleeps, the silence, the traffic, the people, the lights, the noise, it all just seems to evaporate as the clock strikes midnight day after day. The thoughts wonder through my head during the day like a zombie, but during the night, for some reason, the thoughts come out of my finger tips, and all I here is the sound of my keyboard rumbling as I tap each key with that single stroke of precision.

Finally, back in the chair in my living room office, gazing out the window of the 4th floor overlooking NW 23rd street as the computer reboots. Coffee brewed, a few little chocolate sweets in an arms grasp, the monitor lights up, the Ubuntu logo appears and I begin to login. My research begins with the word written on the brick wall I stumbled across not more than hour ago.

Google search, here we go. I typed in the words Search Engine Optimisation in the google search bar and pressed enter. Google did not correct my misspelling mistake. Interesting I thought, and gave me a search result of around 12 million indexed URLs for this keyword phrase. I than typed in search engine optimisation, this time with the letter z spelling, and pulled up a result of around 70 million indexed URLs. WOW! I thought, Am I missing a whole entire market? it could just be. So I got on Skype and hit up one of my British clients in London whom I remembered vaguely would always write this phrase with an s, I never said anything just to be polite. I asked him the question, “When you and I had our Skype conversations about search engine rankings, why do yo always write search engine optimisation with an s and not with a z?” A few seconds later he responded, “that is how we spell it here in British English.” Holy shit! Crap! I thought. There’s a British graffiti artist here in Portland Oregon!